Finding out that your child has a disability can be a confusing time. With so much information on the internet about disabilities, it can be difficult to know where to begin. This side attempts to make this more easy by offering a few simple steps.
- One of the beginning steps in helping your child is understanding your child's disability. What are the limitations? What are the affects of the disability? What are tools that can help them? In the Parent Resources page, you will find information about various disabilities.
- The second, and one of the most important steps is learning your rights as a parent. The Legislation page will provide you with information about the Americans with Disabilities Act, Assistive Technology information, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). As a parent, the IDEA is a very important document because it explains what your roles and rights should be to help your child in school. These documents may be a bit confusing with all the terms and abbreviations used by the creators of these documents. Thus, the terms and definitions page can be helpful in this area.
- The third thing you can do to help your student is learn what tools can help your student. Be familiar with what Assistive Technology (AT) and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) are. You will find this information in the UDL and AT page. Also, the Tools for Your Student page offers many online and mostly free resources that can help your student with their school work. Please take a look at the Miscellaneous Tools section. It offers websites with even more tools for your student that have not been put on this page.
- Understandably so, disabilities effect the entire family. Under Parent Resources is a website link that has many articles about how to foster a family and relationship with your spouse while taking care of a child with disabilities. It takes a stable family to help them.